Ivo Shandor:ThatBillmanGuy: I have the 7 engines going at launch, but all the fuel is going into the central tank, so when I jettison the six the central has a full tank.

You can do even better by cross-feeding fuel between those outer tanks and dropping them in pairs as they run out.

ThatBillmanGuy: Still working on how to slow down to orbit eve and duna.

Aerobraking - let the atmospheric drag do most of the work, then you only need a small burn to fix up the orbit. The trick is to know what altitude to aim for, so look it up on a wiki and/or use the quicksave+restore functions a few times until you figure it out.

Quantum Apostrophe:Give the money directly to people instead of the dog and pony space/defense show and you'll have the same benefits without the middleman.

so base. Food: eat and poop. Like an animal. Animals don't fly in space, well, um, some do, but only because us gifted humans put them there. We must shine our candles, and do the hard things, not because they are easy (like eating and pooping) but because they are hard, like spaceflight. Spaceflight inspires our hearts and minds, not our mouths and digestive tracts.

ThatBillmanGuy:How do you guys get rovers to... Anywhere? I have no idea how to even attach it to my rockets, and then disengage it to drive it around.

I always go with a rover that lands on the surface Skycrane style. The transfer stage decouples leaving the bottom free and you land using a quad cluster of weaker engine on a tank strapped to the top. When you're on the ground and ready to let the landing stage go, just throttle it up a tiny bit and hit the decoupler. It'll fly off and crash somewhere in a spectacular fashion. Or even boost itself back into deep space.

And I have to chime in for Scott Manley on Youtube as well. It sounds corny, but watching his videos are the best way to learn to play the game. They're also not terrible to watch, either. I wait for new episodes of his Interstellar Series daily. It drove me to install the Kethane mod, Kerbal Attachment System, and a couple of the popular part packs. No Remote Tech, though, it seems too farky.

Tobin_Lam:I saw a screenshot of someone that landed on an arch recently.

Mentalpatient87:And I have to chime in for Scott Manley on Youtube as well. It sounds corny, but watching his videos are the best way to learn to play the game. They're also not terrible to watch, either. I wait for new episodes of his Interstellar Series daily.

I use the small Mechjeb controller. Automation is nice when you have like 5+ minute burns. As I type this I'm 3 minutes into a 5 minute burn, and I've got Smart A.S.S. set to keep the ship pointed at the node marker, but I'm still watching the timer to manually kill the throttle at the right time.

I know it's not the point, but there's no reward or even acknowledgement for when you send a probe/Kerbal out on a Kerbol escape trajectory. Those idiots never stopped grinning never mind the fact that they would never see solid ground again, much less other Kerbals or Kerbin.

ThatBillmanGuy:How do you guys get rovers to... Anywhere? I have no idea how to even attach it to my rockets, and then disengage it to drive it around.

While my creations are small and unimpressive compared to other shots here, here are some shots from my Mun rover missions.

This is a close up of the rover where you can see how it attaches. I use the smaller stack separator on the bottom. On top there's a pair of clamp-o-tron Jr.s connecting to the lander. For these designs the initial part was the lander can.

The lander extends around the over with legs set so that when they extend the rover is above the ground a little.

A more zoomed out shot of the rover/lander combo where you can see the lander. This is a different iteration of the design as you can see by the larger transfer stage and beefier lander.

While building the various iterations that led up to these rovers I would set just the lander/rover to launch without a lifting vehicle just so I could test detaching the rover and driving it around.

Fubini:I know it's not the point, but there's no reward or even acknowledgement for when you send a probe/Kerbal out on a Kerbol escape trajectory. Those idiots never stopped grinning never mind the fact that they would never see solid ground again, much less other Kerbals or Kerbin.

The game is still really just an early alpha. Only in the last release is there even the barest of outlines of a campaign. However in the campaign you do get extra science for milestones like orbit, polar orbit, mun orbit, landing, etc.

I would imagine the developers intend to eventually have various missions, reward screens, and things like that.

The only hard part about space is getting people who already live on the planet into it. Once you are there you don`t need huge anything, just efficient. As someone said who has actually been there. "Once you are in orbit you are halfway to anywhere"

People are great, they make new people like some sort of self replicating machine so you don`t need many, they just need to be viable.

Then the fact that they breed forces them to build more places for humans which sets in motion a load of resource gathering, habitat forming, tech development etc out of sheer need.

Not all the mass in the system is down a deep gravity well. The rest would build a lot of stuff...

Give it a few hundred years and we will be swarming over this solar system like ants on a picnic.

Cpl.D:dready zim: If you think KSP stock is fun, try using KOS and writing your own custom mechjeb for each mission...

Mechjeb. For people who want to play the game without actually playing the game.

90% of mechjeb is just information. You can use it without every engaging the autopilot.

Also for some people the game is about designing rockets and manual flying is secondary at best. I happen to like all aspects of the game, but if someone never wants to do a manual launch and they just want to play with designs what is the problem with that? It just adds to the wide appeal of the game.